Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia (as Malaysian), Indonesia (as Indonesian), Brunei (as Melayu Brunei) and Singapore (as the national language and one of four official languages of Singapore). It is spoken natively by 40 million people across the Malacca Strait, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and southern Thailand, Riau province, the eastern coast of Sumatra, and the Riau Islands in Indonesia, and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak in Borneo.
In Malaysia, the standard language is called Bahasa Malaysia "Malaysian language". In Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines it is called Bahasa Melayu "Malay language", and in Indonesia it has undergone a series of standardizations and modifications to form what is now called Bahasa Indonesia, "Indonesian language", and furthermore designated as Bahasa Nasional "National Language" and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu "Unifying Language/Lingua Franca". However, in areas of central to southern Sumatra (mainly Riau) where the language is indigenous, Indonesians refer to it as Bahasa Melayu and designate it as one of their regional languages.
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